Second, GitHub provided easy discoverability and a network effect that allowed projects to become popular very quickly. README pages made it fast and easy for a developer to describe their project. Forks and stars showed which projects were gaining popularity and proving useful. Activity was easily tracked, and lively repositories could be identified. As more developers joined and contributed, the virtuous cycle of the network effect took hold. Suddenly code was appearing everywhere, bugs were being fixed, and popular projects were becoming de facto standards.
Third, GitHub provided a social network for developers. Thanks to profile pages, contribution graphs, and easily searchable histories, developers were able to establish a professional history and reputation online. A developer’s resume wasn’t complete without a link to their GitHub profile. Open source contributions became an easy way for early-career developers to establish themselves and demonstrate experience and skills when job seeking. A developer without a GitHub page became like a designer without a portfolio.
A new model for development
Open source started as a fledgling movement with scattered repositories and ad hoc collaborative processes. The development of Git, a distributed source control system, and the arrival of GitHub, which harnessed Git and unleashed its power, moved open source from a minor developer subculture to the dominant model for building software that it is today. Without GitHub, there very likely wouldn’t be projects like Node.js, React, and Kubernetes.
